This messes up my view of the whole company, as well as my afternoon. I was just starting to get interested in Peloton but since I hadn't gotten into it, it's easy to drop the idea.
I hope their reasoning isn't that a child shouldn't have used it. Kids love video games. They need to figure out how to minimize the risk in addition to doing all they can to prevent kids from using it.
Sued a competitor into submission, allegedly dropping Apple Watch support because they're launching their own smartwatch ... they don't seem like a great company all around tbf.
They're not dropping Apple Watch support. They support it in classes but dropped support for it in their mixed mode workout routines. Apparently the Apple Watch is kinda bad at tracking mixed mode workouts.
Sadly that's exactly their reasoning: "The Peloton Tread+ is safe for use at home when operated as directed and in accordance with our warnings and safety instructions"
One of the lessons you're eventually supposed to learn when designing consumer products is that you don't get to decide what "used correctly" means.
If, in actual use, some people are leaving the key in the treadmill, then just having the key and two sentences in the manual isn't going to be considered an adequate substitute for having a tread guard.
"But they didn't read the manual!" isn't going to absolve them of liability either.
I think the question of “should the design have prevented this?” Would factor in. If someone doesn’t clip the safety cord to themselves and then trips and the machine keeps running and injures them, the only possible way to stop this kind of event is with a safety clip which was already provided and the user chose to not use.
If you do a google images search for "running treadmill" you'll see most of them have some design aspect that would prevent the accident shown in the video, most commonly a bar or guard of some sort that would stop a child or large object being dragged under.
I hope their reasoning isn't that a child shouldn't have used it. Kids love video games. They need to figure out how to minimize the risk in addition to doing all they can to prevent kids from using it.